The Migration of the Animals
by shelter
Summary: One-shot. How did someone as skilled as Soi Fon end up with Omaeda as her Lieutenant? A not-so typical story about too much to drink, random acts of violence & their first meeting which started it all.


**THE MIGRATION OF THE ANIMALS**

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**DISCLAIMER:** Bleach & its characters belong to Kubo Tite.

**RATING:** T for Language

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_Thanks to **youkai_girl** & **Vally14** of Livejournal, & **Roxius **from for proofreading, beta-ing & giving me invaluable advice on this fic. Without them, this fic would just be a big mess. _

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**The Migration of the Animals**

_A Bleach One-shot_

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He knows he visits the tavern in the outer _Rukongai_ too often for someone of his status. But when he is passed over for promotion once again, he decides to desert his post, slinking away in morning to the tavern to lap up sake as if it he were a wayward beast stumbling upon an oasis.

By midday he begins to demand plum wine, and an hour later he mixes both and downs them with the fervent pace of someone gulping for an antidote. In between shots, he wishes life in the Gotei 13 to be as simple as a drink in the glass: filling for the stomach, relaxing on the head and delightful to the point of repetition. Unfortunately, he contemplates, it is not. In his reflection in the mirror stretched across the far side of the tavern, he sees reality as it really is: disgracefully 6th seat, disgracefully left in a loser division, disgracefully slumped over his table, his cheeks padded red with sake, distraught or both.

Promotion, he thinks aridly, is like a bird flying south for winter. Completely seasonal.

"A _drunkard_ for a Captain! – And a _bitch_ as his second!" he blurts aloud. He knows, for certain, now, he can outperform his Captain Kyoraku at the drinking game, anytime, any day.

He misjudges the trajectory of his next swallow, and grinds the sake cup into his cheek. It rebounds and chimes into pieces on the floor. And there, when he gropes his way across the table for a replacement, he sees a lady seated by the table opposite.

Sake is never complete without women, he immediately thinks. One hand steadying his face, he blinks away the wafting blur comes in from the top of his vision like a timely wind. He tries to take in the view while readying an additional drink; that he fails to properly do so convinces him this young lady is worth a shot.

He sees her attire – he knows this district has, according to his taste, some of the better looking _tayu_ in the _Rukongai – _and thinks she might, literally, be open for business early today. He sees the steep cliffs of her exposed shoulders, her spine like stones in shallow water as she leans on the table. What a fine show! He tries to concentrate on drinking, but bubbles his sake down the side of his jowls. He readies his proposal, one hand fingering the coins in his pocket.

But her eyes swerve in his direction, startling him. They close into slits, at which she tosses a raised chin at him:

"What the hell are you looking at, Ojii-san?"

He feels affronted. Seriously, he deduces while fumbling, he is not that old! He accepts the young lady's hostile gaze, and slurs what he thinks is an equally compelling response.

"Justice, for eyes who have seen plenty of sorrows," he remarks. He is satisfied at this, so he presses on valiantly. "A little speck of joy at the end of a miserable day."

She ignores him. For some reason he will forget later, he takes this as a signal for starved attention, so he detaches himself from the sweaty slick of his seat and ushers himself into the empty chair opposite hers.

"You should keep your little speck of joy where it rightfully belongs," she fires back at him. For a moment, he catches the missionary intent in her tone. She deliberately avoids his glare, the exaggerated arc of her braids turning in her wake. In her eyes he thinks he notices something; he concludes it to be a late-show of longing.

It excites him even more.

He calls out for more sake. More bottles are delivered, like implements to further his cause. Up close, with the clarity more sake brings, she looks better. Her cheeks are flushed the colour of cherry. A wet triangle of sweat gleams under her throat. The slices of skin, visible in between the cuts from her absolutely _seductive_ dress, alert him of the dark arch of her armpit to the wedge of muscle twitching in her thigh. He imagines her hair, braids unbound, forming a luscious black delta against the soft background of a bed –

Her voice hammers him on the head while he takes in these details.

"You have a lot of cheek coming to my table to stare me up."

She recognizes his intentions! At this new development, he gamely slides his face across the table at her, his other hand accompanies this movement with a host of coins.

"Then would you reward it with a kiss?" he asks. "Or more?"

At his offer she empties her drink – hard, copper-scented tea from the looks of it – and rises to her feet. While height or any other dimensions are of no concern to him – especially in the dark where, as Captain Kyoraku always notes, all women are the same – she barely reaches to his chest. This might be a problem, he thinks – (he makes a mental note to return to headquarters after this over to check the legal age of minors with which he can get involved with)

Her mouth dissolves into a smile – a smile sharply edging into her face. He can almost hear his heart jump at her enthusiasm! She nears him till her twig-like arms are almost uplifted with ardent worship to his face. He thinks this is almost perfect, and he lowers himself for the kiss.

So he did not anticipate the blow. Really though, he had probably expected a playful slap. But when his cheek crumbles under the force of her elbow, angled at an uppercut to inflict optimal damage, he cannot hide his surprise, going down hands flailing like a bird thrashing in a trap. His back skims off the side of the table. The wood pokes painfully into his spine. In his ears he hears the entire tavern release a whoop, drunk on the spectacle. As if on instinct his hand reaches for his concealed _Zanpakuto_, only to understand the pitiful nature of that move: to use a _Shinigami's_ blade on a commoner, a girl!

"You – you thought that would hurt me?" he clutches a table, reassembles himself and hoists himself up on one knee. The weight of his belly almost overbalances him. He eyes the feisty girl, her pose guarded like – like a _Shinigami_ herself, he thinks (but really, not possible) – through the curtain of sweat dripping from the folds on his arm.

"I am a _Shinigami_ of the Gotei 13! I won't be so easily bested by the wiles of a common harlot!" he announces, his hands apart, as the other customers noise what he thinks could be approval at his showmanship. He thinks the stoned applause rises at his insistence of his right for free and fair services.

He tries to be game: he draws another smile, then winks in the direction of the girl.

He tries to declare again: "I am a _shinigami_ –"

She settles a palm on a nearby table. Without any force the entire surface bursts into splinters as the girl clenches her hand. Her eyes, he realizes a bit too late, harbour the look of someone eager to throw herself into combat.

"Did you call me a common harlot?" she demands.

This time his hands attempt to anticipate her moves, protecting his face. But through the bright slats of his fingers he sees her place a hand on his shoulder. At once he feels stuck, as if pinned in his place by a massive weight where her hand is pressing down on him. In a move so fast he fails to even see it properly, she holds him in position and propels the knob of her knee into his groin.

He sees himself falling, the floor of the tavern whirlpooling before he finally hits the floor. The pain of the blow rises, but it pales in comparison to the heat rushing to his face at the now audible, crackling laughter of the other customers. When he stumbles at finding a footing, the girl's face confronts his pride.

"You're going to pay for all that you've done, you pig."

He backs away into a table. She advances onto him. She blows aside all obstructing furniture with her right fist.

"Can – can we talk about this –?" he whimpers.

"A bit too late for that now, don't you think?" she screeches. Something – _something _– is dissipating from her arms and dousing the debris with a watery current. When she comes within an arm of him, he can feel it eroding his face away. And she says:

"I'm going to make sure you'll never go on another mission as a _Shinigami_."

It does not take any more persuasion: he is convinced she is dangerous, convinced of both the repressive, emotional tone in her voice which gives her words the weight of righteous rage, convinced of the fierce responsibility to avenge his insults blooming with her every step – When she is near enough to level a strike, he decides his man-pride at holding his ground is not worth the predicted pain.

So he runs for it.

The slapping of feet on ground behind him announces she is giving chase.

Doubt and imagined cowardice loop over and over again in his mind as he scrambles down from the _Rukongai_ tavern, out onto the street and into the wasted scrubland. Dry grass scratches at his calves as they perform _shunpo_. He follows the sloping gradient down to overused farmland: sandy ground, shoulder-height brambles and chunks of sandstone, loitering amongst bare ground knolls. When his doubt gets the better of him he slows to catch his breath; crouching in the grass, he waits to draw his _Zanpakuto. _

But he catches sights of her not far behind, like an animal heading straight for its prey. She hurdles the slope without effort, the muscles in her outstretched legs creasing with the stride. She is sprinting so fast, her arms moving in an athletic arc that, he realises now, slowing down to ambush her had been a stupid mistake. He turns to run, makes it five paces, and hits a swathe of uneven, loamy ground. His ankle surrenders under a misstep. It surges with pain – he falls.

Before he can even crawl away she is overshadowing him. She flips him over – _with one hand_ – and until he can see that she has not a single stroke of sweat on her face. He does notice, however, the warrior-fury, cradled in her eyes.

"You _Shinigami_ men are all the same. Hanging your pride by too much skin," she says, her voice barking, throaty.

"No, wait – wait!" he tries to imagine how helpless his voice must sound. "I'm –"

"What? Sorry?"

"Yes – yes! _Really_!" he waves his hands before him, as if believing they will illustrate his point. "I'm really sorry for everything!"

"_Everything?_"

"For whatever _Shinigami_ did. For all my –"

"Shut up, you bastard."

She removes something from behind her back, her lips moving in rapid words he cannot hear. When her trembling lips finally come to a stop, she fastens a nasty, needle-like scythe on her middle finger. From his place on the dirt, kicking up stand as he tries to scurry away, he views the jagged point catch the sunlight and blind him for a moment. And, now, he really thinks he is doomed.

"I'm not letting any of you insult me as if I'm a common whore," she snarls, her middle finger erect against the stinger. She points it down and aims it at his forehead. "Not from all those other men. And definitely not from a loser like you."

The swipe comes so fast he thinks her hand merely twitched. The relief that he feels no pain supports this. Then, immediately, it comes, exploding across his cheek – a hot finger of pure pain, made even more waxy with blood. Something even more horrific follows: the blistering, sizzling itch spreads across most of the injured half of his face, unevenly, forcing his blood back in. Whatever – whatever this spreading wound is – it stops short of his lips, resting in the overhang of nose. And it _hurts_. The girlish shriek he makes only receives a smug grin from his assailant.

"Death comes in pairs. A murderer and a victim. And a second final strike," she announces and boots him in the face with the tip of her shoe.

His only reflex action – his high-pitched, stammered whimpering – disappoints him. He buries his face and head into the sandy ground. The grains inflame whatever has bloated itself across his face. But he knows, he does not want to die – not like this.

An interval passes. The sharp chorus of crickets returns. Every breath he takes is shredded with flaking sand through his nostrils. He is forced to emerge from the bunker of his fingers. Only to realise the girl, one leg arched and pulled taut, is sitting in the grass. Her gaze is neutral, the small dagger hand-shaped left stuck in the sand before her like a piece of bone casually discarded. At its point of contact with the sand, a perfectly symmetrical black symbol flourishes from the dagger's tip like a crater.

He knows he should still be afraid, self-preserving even, to the point of taking this opportunity to flee. But all he does is blurt out: "I'm alive –"

She turns to him. Her eyes flicker, and he gets the sense he is staring into the eyes of a feral animal that has killed much larger prey: somewhat triumphant, somewhat proud of itself, but still largely unsure of what to do with all that meat. She stretches her wildcat-like frame, and says,

"I really shouldn't kill you here like this, _Shinigami_," she sighs, her gaze collapsing sharply to the ground. "Can't afford to have more of you on my tail."

He nervously paws his way upright. He comes within a foot of her before he again prostrates himself at her feet.

"_Thank_ you _thank_ you _thank_ you –" But she withdraws from him as if he is something dead that has started to smell. Still he hurriedly displays his goodwill. "I won't tell my superiors. I won't tell the guards. Not anyone –"

"Shut up," she says, and stands. "Come on let me take that thing off your face."

She sweeps her blade from the ground, and he cringes at the sight of the weapon nestled among her stick-thin fingers. When she reaches out her unarmed hand, he backs into the sand.

"Really now, you can't go back to _Seireitei_ looking like this," she says, a hint of pleading in her voice. "Then all the Captains will know I did this."

"What?" he blurts. The combined effect of the sake, the bleeding cut on his cheek and the biting sand reefing his forehead take its tool. It takes him a whole moment to swallow her statement, to which he, before he can help himself, bluntly replies: "You're – a _Shinigami_? Too?"

What would have seemed pretty obvious on other days only now comes to his attention. In hindsight he thinks he should not have drunk so much to incur both this skilled warrior's wrath and suffer such a severe lag in his reasoning.

"Wasn't it _obvious_?" her eyes narrow and she fastens a hand to her hip, making her look like one of his immature, grouchy nieces who are nothing but hormones and bad news. "You thought I wasn't good enough?"

He realises his mistake. "Oh no _no_ – no, I think you're great! You're a skilled Shinigami. I _really_ think you're probably better than me! I do, I do –"

"Probably?"

"You _are_… I mean. You _are_ better than me!"

Her posture suddenly stiffens, her sword-hand twirls towards him. The muscles in that arm appear to brace themselves as she speaks:

"It's people like you who think I'm just a little girl who make me sick," she spits. A translucent tear of spittle settles right beside his hand. "It's all those self-righteous Captains who look down on me as if I don't deserve my place!"

Then her anger reignites. She claws a fistful of his robes and drags him up to meet her face. He prepares to be struck between the eyes. But all he can think of is how innocent and young, elf-like even, her face is while wracked by anger. Up close she smells, faintly, of crushed chrysanthemum.

"All those bastards!" she dangles her blade so close to his right eyes he can see the grooves on the otherwise smooth surface. "All those men! All those hypocrites!"

"Please, please, calm down –" he finds himself begging.

"DON'T – tell me to calm down," she hisses. Her frantic eyes pass through his predicament to something even more personal. "It's their fault! It's all their fault Yoruichi-sama left in the first place! The hypocrites!"

He timidly tries to negotiate for his life; he feels her hands trembling as they strain their grip on his robes till they threaten to rip: "They look down on me too –"

"Shut the _fuck_ up!" her voice hits him like a fist. "You don't lecture me! I get joked at by those bastards every damn day!"

She throws him; the ground connects with his temple, and temporarily the world condenses into the sky. Then a shuffling pain: his vision returns to see her elbow on his throat, the dagger hovering – he can even feel its presence – where the first slash hit him –

"All I need to do – is to stab this through that fat face of yours and you'll stop looking down on me for eternity!"

"Please, it's not my fault!" he finds himself hollering. "Pleasedontkillme –"

"It's never anyone's fault isn't it?"

He finds his bottom lip and borrows his teeth onto it. He mutters in response to her challenge:

"But you don't have to take it out on me –"

The pressure on his Adam's apple prevents him from breathing. Involuntarily, he dry heaves, hacking. He finds both tears and saliva flying from him. His attacker curses and swears – the weight on his neck shifts again – and now he finds himself shoved back into the sand, barb-filled fingers of grass sweeping into his bloody cheek –

The wind nudges sand into face. In what he thinks might be the last accessible feeling he can ever conjure, he tries to accept the odd weight straddling him. He finds himself thinking how it could be that on the day of his death he would be curled in terror in between the legs of a disastrously cute woman? His crotch inflates even before he can control it. Pathetic, he thinks, of this irony. He thinks that if he survives this, no one would ever believe him.

Through his blurring, grain-checkered vision, the entire plain of dirty sand extends across the mounds of rises on this pitiful _Rukongai _sector. So pitiful that when faces appear beyond the rises they choose to ignore what they probably deem to be a summary execution then get involved. As the pain intensifies all around his neck – and the girl begins to growl like a rabid dog before its frenzied final rampage – he wishes he could walk out of this tragedy and never come back. He feels worse than a minor character in a _shounen_ manga: there to fill someone else's title scene – there to die.

Clouds in the sky above bud like dark petals before a funeral.

And the weight relieves itself.

"Get up," the girl's voice drifts from behind.

A sand-softened boom of something hitting the ground. The dragging of feet. He turns to see the blade at his feet, sheathed, and the girl sitting as if dumped at the foot of a rise, her head drooping like a pendulum between her long arch of her shoulders. He both wants to take the blade for himself (just in case) and to move forward to comfort her. But he wrestles with another bout of gagging, and heaves.

When he has finished his anticlimactic thanks he, too, sits opposite her, the uninterested blade between them like a sign of ceasefire.

"Where are you from, _Shinigami_?" she asks, her voice deeper, less forceful now.

His first response is to divulge his family's history, but it stalls in his already-hurting throat. All he can squeak out is: "Omaeda Marechiyo, 6th Seat of Eight Division –"

"You're that womanizer's officer?" she says. She cocks her head till it rests on her erect fist. "You like him?

"What?" he processes the question, the first non-hostile demand she has required of him. "Not really."

She extends a thin arm to him, biceps curved, another offer of hopeful peace.

"Captain Soi Fon, 2nd Division, commander _Onmitsukidō –_"

"Captain?"

"– And I want you to get out of that lazy ass Captain's headquarters. Because I need a Lieutenant."

"Captain?" he asks again. Revelation limps into his senses: from _harlot_, to _Shinigami_, and now, _Captain_.

She gets to her feet; he tenses. The way she moves, he thinks more clearly now, is almost flawless – minimal use of her muscles, gracefully stealthily. But with her shoulders all hunched up, it seems as if she wants to pick a fight with anyone and everyone.

"So what say you?" she pauses in front to keep her dagger. "I made you an offer."

"What?" he knows, but it takes some time for him to understand. "What? Lieutenant? But –"

"I need someone who'll stay out of my way," she adds.

"As if I would ever try to –"

"That's why I think you'll be fit for the job."

They both continue to observe each other. She flicks her fingers in mid-air, like she is polishing her fingernails, and at once he can feel the roasting rash on the side of his face subside. His hand flies up to touch his wound, still raw with fresh blood, the skin around it swollen and coarse, like sand pressed against the tips of his fingers.

"How did you –?" he asks.

"I apologize, Omaeda-san," she clutches her blade and it disappears, consumed between her flowing uniform. And he is stunned completely when she hunches into a deep bow. "I shouldn't have used my weapon on you. I overreacted."

He finds the apology long overdue. But coming from her, with the scowl lifting from between her eyes and the sides of her mouth cutting into the flush of her cheeks, she makes him feel as if he is the criminal. He pats down his soiled robes, and responds:

"And I'm sorry for insulting you, and for doing what I did."

For the first time since their violent meeting, she grants him a smile. It is slight, and she does not meet his gaze as the cheeks quake to accommodate the grin, as if she is too shy to show it. But it lasts only for a moment and it is gone almost immediately.

"I would like to see you again," she tells him, her face glows a dirty crimson. She runs a hand through her twin braids, the rings at the end of them swivel at her sides, mobbed by the wind.

He hesitates, his words are burdened by all the excitement of the day: "But –"

"You mean you don't want to see me again?" she questions, voice deepening.

"No, no. _I do_ – I do,"

"Good. Because I want to know your answer."

But he already knows it. So he risks a smile in return: "Then, I'll find you at the 2nd Division headquarters." And then decides to decorate his answer with an honorific. "Captain."

She nods, and turns to leave, her slow steps unleashing wisps of sand which the wind carries away. He is relieved, pleased too, at the amazing turn of events.

He thinks she is pleased. Then at that moment she appreciates his patience with another half-turn of her head. Her eyes swoop at him, catching his eye and moving down to his feet, and up again.

"Do I arouse you, Omaeda-san?"

It is his turn to feel self-conscious, exposed to the whole world. His hands clamp to down his crotch, his waist bends to help them conceal his blunder –

But she is already walking away. The high tone of her drawling voice – a devout accusation he hears and will continue to hear for years and years to come – carries over to him easily:

"You _fucking _disgust me."

_END_

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_First Edit (11.07.09), 2nd Edit (23.07.09), Final (01.08.08)_

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**NOTES: **This isn't Soi Fon x Omaeda per se. More my take on their first meeting before both we in their current positions in 2nd Division. I wrote this while I was wrapping up Furniture, so there's a hint of Youruichi x Soi Fon here. And since Yourichi's departure overshadows Soi Fon as a character, it can account for her erratic, irrational behaviour.

**Thanks very much for reading :)**


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